Agenda for final Aldridge Commission hearing released

The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond has released the agenda for its final public hearing, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in New York. The hearing will feature two sessions on international issues, two on science (lunar “and other space science” and astrophysics), as well as sessions on sustainability, media, business, and space advocacy […]

Kerry and Chandra

Over at an earlier posting about Kerry’s voting record on NASA, Bill Turner has supplied the text of an email message he received from the Kerry campaign about the candidate’s view on space programs. There’s not much detail in the message, and the link provided to a December 2003 speech he gave at Stanford mentions […]

More commentary about the new exploration initiative

In an essay published Thursday, SPACE.com science writer Robert Roy Britt comments on the lack of support for the new space initiative within Congress, bringing up a number of points discussed here and elsewhere recently. He also notes recent reports that the bulk of the budget increase NASA has asked for will go to support […]

When a space race can be a good thing

While I have been skeptical of claims of an imminent US-China space race, others, like Mark Whittington, have not. However, a more important issue might be the perception of competition, Dwayne Day argues in a new article from The Space Review. Increased spending on civilian space activities, such as manned spaceflight, takes funding and other […]

Science and the exploration plan

The New York Times published an article Tuesday about concerns some scientists have about the new exploration initiative. While a lot of attention has been given to NASA’s decision to cancel the final shuttle Hubble servicing mission—not directly related to the initiative—the plan also calls for cutting some space and earth science budgets, including deferring […]

Senate lunar missions hearing update

The Senate Commerce Committee’s web site now lists the hearing scheduled for Tuesday on “International Space Exploration Program.” The hearing is scheduled for 3:30 pm in Russell 253, and will be webcast. The witnesses include the three mentioned here previously (Grahn, Logsdon, and Oberg), as well as Marcia Smith of the Congressional Research Service.

Senate hearing on foreign lunar missions

According to a source, the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing next Tuesday on unmanned lunar missions being planned, or are already in progress, by several other nations. The preliminary list of witnesses includes:

John Logsdon of GWU (discussing Japanese missions) James Oberg (on Chinese plans) Sven Grahn of Swedish […]

NASA budget concerns (part 2)

While there was some confusion about the time, location, and even existence of a House Appropriations Committee subcommittee hearing on NASA’s budget, the hearing did in fact occur. NASA released the opening remarks by Sean O’Keefe in that hearing, but the bigger news was the concern raised by leading committee members about the budget. Subcommittee […]

NASA budget concerns (part 1)

At the AIAA International Policy Seminar on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chairman of the House Science Committee, made it clear that he felt NASA would not get the full budget increase the President requested. The full text of the speech is on the House Science Committee site, and I have a condensed […]

Journeys with John

The reelection web site for President Bush has introduced a new feature, “Journeys with John”, that attempts to show on a state-by-state basis why John Kerry is wrong on some of the issues. For Florida (one of only two states included to date) one of the topics is titled “Cutting NASA Funding”:

In 1995, Kerry […]